Mozilla Firefox 27 now available with better performance and security

Mozilla on Tuesday launched the latest version of their popular web browser. Firefox 27 includes a major update to the Firefox Social API, improved security via TLS (Transport Layer Security, the successor to SSL) and added language support via Android, just to name a few.

The Social API update now allows multiple social integration partners to utilize the service simultaneously. It first arrived in November 2012 as part of Firefox 17 to enable social networks to integrate directly into the browser. Unfortunately, previous iterations required users to select a single social network to receive toolbar notifications from.

The process to switch between active social networks was a bit awkward which is likely one of the reasons we haven’t seen very many integrations introduced yet. Mozilla added partners Delicious and Saavn alongside the release of Firefox 27 and with any luck, there will be more to come.

In the security department, Mozilla has enabled TLS 1.1 and 1.2 by default. These features have been part of the browser for some time but they weren’t enabled by default. Mozilla initially wanted to avoid compatibility problems with sites that didn’t support the standard early on which is why it wasn’t enabled by default until now.

Firefox 27 also comes with the SPDY 3.1 protocol baked in. If you aren’t familiar, SPDY (pronounced speedy) is a network protocol developed by Google to help reduce web page load latency and improve security.